The_Capt

Are we sure that was really UA? That had the look of a Russian operation matching similar stuff we have seen before. Regardless is it weird. Troops are riding because if they were inside they would likely be a lot more dead and wounded. Context is missing here. That IFV is driving parallel to the trench lines so this may have been a rear area and a lay back tank hunting team. Or is was a recon det but why it would stay mounted this close to enemy positions is beyond me.

I question the conclusion/deductions on RA artillery. In all of this fuss and bother we are not seeing anywhere near the same level of indirect fires from the RA as we have in the past. We all recall the clumps of totally destroyed RA vehicles last year as they were shattered by UA artillery, we are not seeing it here. FASCAM is nasty stuff, it forces continual re-proving of a mined area, but traditionally there is a very limited supply of it. While I know we are all focused on the Bradley engagement yesterday, the real question is what is happening to the RA operational system? How hard is it being strained and how is it reacting? My sense is the RA is spread very thin and the UA is probing and poking to see what it can do. We have not seen the UA main effort yet. In fact they may have not even decided where that main effort will fall. There may be weeks of UA corrosive warfare in front of them as they try and break the RA in an area. If they are successful, I suspect the RA will then crack like an egg and collapse pretty quickly. My sense is that operationally the RA is pretty brittle right now. And of course they still have Wagner and Russian Free Legions to worry about in the backfield.

You don’t in anything except your boots and even then it is tricky.

Ok, well things are getting clearer. Retreating Bradley’s are extracting. One flies by, second one clearly hit a land mine. Troops de-bus, no panic the take cover while the gun camera Bradley provides covering fire (ballsy not to simply bail). Everyone starts popping smoke and troops jump on Bradley to get out of there. First point shows why it is a bad idea to try to drive back out. Always push, if you get hit at least you have cleared as far as you got. But I suspect things had gone so wrong they abandoned the mission. Second troops were controlled and did the right thing post mine strike. Third, no RA artillery. Now I am sure they were very concerned it was going to start dropping but that minefield is not being effectively covered. Those two videos are four minutes, RA mortars should at least be hammering them - and we are glad they weren’t but that is poor cover of an obstacle. Lastly, no idea what they were shooting at but obviously in treeline in direction of gun and popped smoke. So best guess, a recon in force got hit by ATGM from a treeline. Likely lost breaching vehicles. At least two Bradleys tried to drive back out (bad) other may have been hit coming or going. Hit more mines because they were in a Devils OODA loop but that gun Bradley looks like it kept it head and got those troops out because we don’t see a lot of bodies in the Russian videos. So bad day in a minefield, looks like most of the troops out alive, so they live to fight again and have proven recon is a dangerous job. RA still have tank hunting teams and their arty support is questionable (at least in this area). Hardly a disaster, some AAR points but no need to start calling the Kremlin to discuss terms yet.

Nice PS. Now that is the question we are all asking. Can we even shape the environment enough to crack a deliberate defence in depth in this environment. This is a major test to see if Defensive primacy is back. Offence and Defence have handed off primacy since the beginning. 1494 - Offence is back, last until organizational reforms in mid-1600 and Defence is back. 7 Years War and more reforms along with changes to logistic and Offence is back, lasts thru 1812 until US Civil War but professional do not realize until 1914 when Defence came back with vengeance. That lasts until 1940 and we are back to Offence…and is it pivoting again in Ukraine? We shall see.

Could be, I agree that this was not the only breach. In fact it looks like they did get thru even if it took a few tries. My sense is that RA cover was not that focused or dense. There were likely some loses to Russian fires but most look like they were mine strikes (note blown track on one Bradley). It could have also been more simply that the lead breaching team missed a mine - they are not 100%, and the follow on Leo hit it, happens. The bridge head team got caught and looks like they tried to push. They might have been leaning in because they thought the obstacle was halfway breached. Regardless, I don’t necessarily think this is a UA clown show, at least without a lot more data. It really looks like a western style breach that went wrong. It is going to happen so no point in getting to upset.

400m deep mixed field with an AT ditch in the middle can be done in 4-5 mins with a full on breaching team that includes AEV support…but that is an eternity under fire.

I honestly think that if you have not shaped it, the lone breacher is going to die. A lone tank with a plough is just a suicide mission if the enemy has ISR and PGMs linked. So sure it is a bad idea to send a breaching force in too because it is a bad idea to send any force. I don’t think it makes life any better to lone gun the breathers in that environment. I suspect the forces here thought they had a better grip on it, and frankly I can see a lane past where they get hit so something got through either before or after them. It looks more like a breach lane misadventure to be honest. The Bradley’s kept pushing because even blinded or shaped the RA is going to figure it out if one spends a long weekend out there. I really don’t think it is an “old doctrine/new doctrine” issue, it is new environment where setting conditions for a breaching op have changed dramatically - you know we did see this coming? If they had done the lone vehicle they may have only lost the Leo but by taking too long to get over the obstacle they could easily lose the same Bradley’s on the other side of the obstacle - recall the river fiasco for the RA down at Severodonetsk? It is really pick you poison. Basically we have a lone KA-52 and what may be some mortar impacts. The rest looks like mines. So the UA may very well have established conditions but then got all FUBAR in the lane, then the UASs shows up and time to say bye bye to the nice US hardware and run like hell.

Well from the video this looks like a single lane breach. In fact it kinda looks like the breach went through when the picture pans out and these guys were doing follow on and got got. A recon in force is going to go in lighter as they are not trying to push a formation but instead units/sub-units. So we see a single breaching system, there were likely two. A full on assault would have a lot more resources. I think the tip will be explosive breaching if the UA has it.

I was talking about the unhealthy and unholy tank lust demonstrated on the forum.

People have tried all sorts of stuff. And mines come in a lot of flavours. You have magnetic impulse - so big steel will set it off, tilt rod, pressure and even seismic. A minefield normally have mixed rows of these. Some of those more exotic systems may get one type of mine but won’t do anything for the others. And then there is the survivability of the system. You can’t keep it in bubble wrap until you get it in the minefield, it has to roll down roads getting shelled and shot at, so lighter really equals either different war or way back from the line. You can breach a lane with explosives or mechanically, often a full on breaching op will do both. Now one thing we may see more of is good old fashion hand breaching at night. These are dismounted sappers sneaking in and making a safe lane. They can rig to blow all at once or doe hand lifts (but that is riskier).

Exactly. A 10km deep minefield would be something you might see in Korea. The Russians did not have time or resources to build those (and the UA would have seen them from space). So we are likely talking about belts of minefields 200-500 ms deep. For these one would do multiple charges in tandem and combine it with mech breaches in multiple places. From the video this was likely not a major breaching operation, more likely a recon in force. I mean unless there is more video showing a Bde assault.

Well you basically have to deny it father back. So SHORAD - maybe people should have been screaming for that instead of freakin Leopards - or you can strike the tac aviation support systems in depth. Or you live with it and send in enough mass to get past it - of course this hits the ISR and PGM dilemma.

Except the part where in the video I cannot see arty or ATGMs. Those look like mine strikes to me. The threat was there but it is still looks a little light on covering fires. Breaching is a one way trip under fire. The new ISR dynamic makes it worse not better as your opponent can spot and react faster. So sending a lone breacher out there and then waiting for the bridge head force you are giving more time to react. If you are spotted under PGMs etc before hand you are dead anyway. In fact if your opponent has that level of ISR you either need to change that or breach somewhere else. In your scenario the breached dies and then the Bradley’s sit around waiting for another breacher system and there are damn few of these to begin with. This highlights the requirement to shape the battle space and erode an opponent a lot before attempting breaching operations - not lone breaching suicide missions. From the video I cannot tell if the UA did that and they just ran into mines and kept pushing because they knew the defender would figure it out eventually? Or if they did not effectively shape the space then they were pretty much screwed at the start line. I am thinking mine strikes because those vehicles are still intact (except one) and not all burning.

So mech clearing is done three ways: Roller - big fat steel wheels on the front of a tank or AFV. These can take several hits but are really designed to detect the edge of a minefield and then prove it after the plow goes through. Plough - like the name suggests. They dig in a couple deep tracks that dig under the mine and flip them out of the way. The rollers come next to prove. Ploughs cannot take too many hits so we save em specifically for known minefields. Flail - big whipping chains. This is normally for area clearances and not done in contact (unlike WW2). They make a gawd awful amount of signature. So rollers are freakin heavy so AFVs and tanks. Ploughs really are designed to be on tanks. And flails are specialized. The unmanned versions I have seen tend to be smaller and are for clearing AP lanes but I do know there some larger ones out there.

No, recon should be doing their job and finding the minefield edges (hell they have multi-spectral cameras) and then a breaching operation is designed to: 1. Establish a Force in Place on the friendly side to establish fire and overmatch. In this day and age we would be talking UAS and deep fire support 2. Breaching teams - so explosive line charges. Lengths vary but hundreds of meters. 3. Bridge head force - to secure far side 4. Break out force - to break out. 5. In place and trafficking force to stay on the obstacle to keep it open for follow on ech. The KA -52 is an AD problem that should be sorted before on tries to breach.

Well you get what you paid for. I have been a military engineer for 34 years and was an armoured engineer troops commander a long time ago who ran these sorts of drills. Based on the video snippet I saw it looks a lot like a mech clearance drill that went bad. I do not see any significant artillery strikes near enough to those vehicles to be a factor but ATGMs could definitely be a factor (although none look like they were hit). I mean if there is video of the Bradley’s free wheeling, which is a very bad idea, that is what a mine roller is for.

That capability exists. Not going to solve this problem unless you had a fleet of them. If you did you could likely overwhelm the defences on the minefield and then crash it in multiple places. People are wondering what the hell the UA is doing? Exactly what we trained them to do, this is a western mechanized breach. Now explosive breaching would be a better solution but I am not sure UA has that. And if they do they are likely saving it for the main assault.

And now we can talk about engineering in CM. They go with them to establish a bridgehead on the other side as quickly as possible. Waiting for the clearing vehicle gives the enemy time to dial in/c-move, minute count here. They can also provide some direct fire support in breach, but I always questioned that one. The bridge head can push out and then support follow on main forces. If the clearance vehicle comes under fire there is no “backing out”. Drivers cannot see the cleared lane, vehicles are going to move even slower, or simply risk slipping out of the safe lane and hitting a mine. Now what could have been done is a night silent breach and then you crash the obstacle. But obviously they had to go mechanical. A well trained crew can do this op in 2-3 mins…unless it goes wrong…which It did.

Well that is what a minefield breaching operation going very wrong looks like. Before everyone freaks out the vehicles that kept pushing are supposed to do that. Backing out is just asking to die and impossible to do in column, he saw the RA prove this over and over again. If your breaching vehicle takes a hit - and that appears to be the Leo, you keep pushing even if it means taking casualties. We would do the exact same thing. I mean what are the options? Stop, wait for help or talk things over while the enemy kills you inside a minefield? Back out along the one cleared path…while the enemy kills you in a minefield? Nope you push. Difference between the UA and the RA is that the Leo has a mine plow on the front (which is odd, that is the deep end of clearance, they should be sticking with rollers). The RA was just straight pushing. What is interesting is again the lack of any real RA artillery. No big craters or impact marks. Vehicles look like they took mobility hits (except that one) and the crews bailed and ran. When we do these ops each Combat Team would do two breaches and accept that one is going to die. This is the video from the failed one. We said this from the start - western kit does not come with magic wizard shields that allow them to float above the ground and drive their enemies before them. They blow up just the same as Russian kit. We were always going to see this, and we will likely see more. Russian info sphere is going to push out any and all of these that it can. So buckle in and put your helmets on.

So at the beginning of this we talked a lot about Macro masking - how high level analysis missed the growing bow wave of counter-factual little details as the war unfolded. This led to wrong conclusions and deductions that took some analysts months to get over. The meme social media phenomenon were are seeing now is going the other way - Micro masking aka confirmation bias. Every streamed engagement is confirmation of what we want to happen, not what is actually happening. Here I tend to focus on results and broader trends with a healthy dose of context. We are maybe just getting into the UA offensive and the actual operational effects are unclear. We will know once they are because we will start seeing them on the ground and broader battle spaces. Until then propaganda amplification is going to happen on both sides. This would be why I do not really observe the progress of this war other than here and ISW. The noise leaks through the walls here too but we do try and maintain a semblance of sanity. We definitely want Ukraine to succeed but if we are seeing these same actions in three months with no real progress, we are going to have to admit the UA is spent and this war is going to take a different trajectory to conclusion. No amount of meming is going to change the facts. If we see major success and signs of RA collapse then we will know the other way. We spent a lot of time crystal balling, now is time to simply try and figure out what is actually happening.

There have been a number where AirPower was left out as a factor either by absence, parity or denial - Iran/Iraq War, Former Yugoslavia Civil War, Fall of Afghanistan/Kabul 2021, off the top of the head. Why it was left out varies, example: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0025_BERGQUIST_AIRPOWER_IRANIRAQ.pdf We tend to think of airpower as sacrosanct but in reality it is not. What is weird about this war is that we have both Denial of the conventional manned platforms, and Parity in the low altitude unmanned systems. This has led to a condition where airpower is highly active; however it is not deterministic of outcomes in the land battle. At least not yet.

Well to follow up you got one right there - listen to the doc. A human brain is a machine that runs on electricity and chemicals. Combat will mess up both of those, sometimes permanently. Get the head checked during (if one can on trips off the line) and definitely after. This is not weakness anymore than someone who get their legs shot off is “too weak in using a prosthetic”. Treatments vary, use them. The aim is to win the war and then become a functioning member of society when it is over…need to work on that last part as hard as one did the first part.

So recall the UA Fall offensive took about 3 months to shape, form up and culminate. Early days in what is likely going to be an operation that will last all summer. These guys are operating in a different war…things will likely go slow until they go fast. Unless the RA is so rotted that they shatter early but we will see. This whole thing right now looks like probing and prodding to be honest. This is not to see the enemy - the UA can do that already - it is to see what the enemy can and will do as a reaction. My guess is that we have moved into a more active shaping phase, the main assaults have yet to come.

Good lord that is a tough one. So are we talking leadership training? Sounds like it. Battlefield leadership and resilience is a big freakin topic. If I had 15 mins before jumping off the truck and running into it: - Don’t get pulled too far in. Combat is pretty wild and it is easy to get pulled too far into a single crisis. The reality is that is all crisis. A tactical line leader needs to keep one step back and try and see the system of crisis as it unfolds. If the leader is pulled in too far they lose the picture they need to sustain in order to give their people the best chances and to keep the pointed at the enemy. - Don’t get pulled too far back. Fear and shock is normal but once the initial contact is made leaders cannot suck too far back. You do that and the troops feel abandoned and you start to lose the ability to get a feel of how the whole machine is holding together. - Combat is a longer game than people think. Once the initial actions and shooting start, the drama starts to normalize. Leaders need to stay on top of that. Normalize can mean troops get sloppy…they got into combat and did not die…so now what? Also the need to watch out for sustainment. Modern western troops were set up for about 20 mins of sustained combat before air or indirect firepower came to the rescue. The UA guys do not have this, so they might have to settle in and make their ammo last - so back to basics like fire discipline and marksmanship (yep they still matter). - On Basics - build them in as priority and stick to them. Once the lead starts flying and people start screaming everything else strips away. You are left with relationships and trust you built up to that point (ie each other) and the basic skills you have beaten into their brains. Something as simple as IAs and stoppages and simply keeping you weapon in operation can be really hard under fire unless it is beaten into muscle memory. Have the troops practice the most mundane things, hundreds of times. - Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Be deliberate and as calm as you can be at all times. Calm like panic is contagious. If the leader is not freaking out, the troops likely won’t either. Be deliberate, take the few extra seconds to pull order together. Get past scared, get past mad and get cold. You should literally feel cold inside - once you get there it gets a lot easier. People become systems. The enemy is a metric. Really hard to describe this space but you have a mission and everything else, including you are simply means to that end, or a obstacle to remove. - Build trust and use it. As a ground force leader your weapon is the unit. It is only as good as you kept it before the shooting started. In combat let it do its job and try hard to stay out of people’s way. There is an art to knowing when to step in and when not too. - Leadership is nothing like the movies or even the BS fed in basic. It starts with whipping the troops in training while driving them in front of you, then it shifts to walking with them under fire - lean on each other. In the back end you will be out in front pulling, sometimes begging and pleading to get them across the finish line. Again quiet calm is the norm. Then when you do yell or swear everyone really pays attention because it is so much out of character. - Establish depth and redundancy…everywhere. Everyone has a 2 IC, 3 IC and then last man standing. I cannot describe how fast the famous “chain of command” can fall apart. So build it deep. Also leave room for informal leaders, they will emerge. - Don’t be a hero, your people do not need one. Some guys go in looking for that hero moment but that often only gets people killed. A hero gets in and gets the job done while keeping as many of his people alive as he can. Take opportunities if the come but don’t lean too far forward at the expense of peoples lives. - Little things matter so much. A joke, a quiet word a little luxury and a small sacrifice. For some troops when they get ragged these little things make all the difference and can sustain them. - Finally, and this is the hardest one, do not forget that you and your people are ammunition. Your job is to spend them on problems. Worse, your job is to convince them that it is worth it. Once the war is over you are going to be living with this fact for the rest of you life. You only get to put that one down at the end. You will spend those years writing reference letters for jobs they are applying for, checking in on the survivors and people left behind, and re-living every decision you made. Just accept that and move on but never forget the weight of this thing, that is your end. Beyond that, resilience is a lot about understanding what is happening to you. If you can name it, you take its power away. You need to be really self aware and do self checks, Cannot stress the importance of the lead NCO and officer team in this. You and your troop or company NCO need to really be able to gauge where each other are at as a check and balance system. And none of it makes sense. You might get into three firefights and are fine, then once fourth you freeze up. Why you froze up could be anything in the human soup. You need to understand it is happening and hand off as quickly as possible. Then get over it because it may never happen again. If it happens a lot or all the time - you are not a coward, you are simply too evolved for this business. Time to get pulled off the line and go do an important job somewhere else. Perhaps you are a brilliant staff officer or analyst that can save hundreds of lives. Everyone will break eventually (well anyone who is not a complete psychopath) it is a matter of when, not if…even you.